Datta Dayadhvam Damyata Shantih Shantih Shantih

Your Baby In My Peanut Butter

My husband and I went to a party a few days ago, hosted by people who were friends of his and whom I was meeting for the first time. The party was the end result of two women cooking for 48 hours straight. There were tables laden with food, bottles of wine and a big tub of ice chilling beers, water and my Orange Crush. Both of the hosts were artists and the home was straight out of any one of a dozen decorating magazines, with fragile wall hangings, expensive lamps on pricey tables. The invitation said dogs were welcome but there wasn’t much for kids to do so it was best to leave them at home.

That was a polite, Southern way of saying “NO KIDS”.

Of course that didn’t stop one couple from bringing their baby. Two other attendees had also given birth within the last three months, and brought their babies in spirit if not in flesh.

Now I know I take a lot of flak for being Childfree in this world that worships children. I get that, because being grumpy about most people’s prized possession/chief accomplishment/reason for being alive is not a way to win friends. So I put up with loud babies banging on the tables in restaurants. I put up with children at buffets mixing lettuce and pudding while they inexpertly try to serve themselves in spite of signs everywhere saying they need to be accompanied by an adult.

But when you’ve been invited to a party at a private home AND told to not bring your child…bringing your child is perhaps the rudest possible thing you could do. Even ruder than dropping your pants and crapping in the middle of the table. Especially if your baby cries uncontrollably. And craps ITS pants at the table. And disrupts the conversations of a dozen harried adults trying to unwind after an uberstressfull week.

I was talking with the hostess off to the side, both of us having to repeat ourselves occasionally when our words were drowned out by infant screams. She confessed to desperately wanting even ONE child, but understanding that so far it hadn’t been God’s plan for her life.

Bringing that baby into an infertile woman’s home was like twisting salt-encrusted shards of glass into an infected wound. It was beyond inconsiderate and well into cruel. I was infertile for years before converting to Childfree and the pain of it all was exquisite. Babies and children are everywhere, and often your home is the only oasis you have to get away from the needles of reminder.

I get that babies make you lose sleep. I get that they change your focus. But they shouldn’t rob you of your ability to understand someone else’s pain. Or the English language. No kids means no kids.

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16 Responses

I could not possibly agree more with you on this. Albeit, I’ve not been to a party that I can think of where this happened (yet), I’m at the age where MOST people in my age group have at least one or more children, so I’ve come to expect that this is the case wherever I go. Thankfully, most of my friends are single, divorced and childless. That’s not my choice in choosing them, that’s just how it worked out, how the dice were cast.

I live upstairs of a Tudor style home and my former downstairs neighbors, who were GREAT, recently bought a house across town and moved. The space they occupied has been for rent since June, and a parade of people have come through to view the apartment for rent. My landlady lives about a half hour south of Nashville, and asked if I would show the apartment in exchange for pay, in order for her not having to drive into town each time to let someone in. I told her “yes”. I also, in this conversation made the request that if she had a choice, to please not rent to a couple with young children. Now, before someone gets their panties in a wad, here’s the thing: when I first moved in, a young couple lived downstairs. The couple had a son around 4 years old. Each morning at 5 am, the child would run through the house, screaming his face off. This was every single morning. Also, the parents never disciplined the child – so actually his behavior was not his fault entirely – it became perfectly acceptable for him to walk over to my patio and pick up terracotta pots and throw them down and break them – this was in the presence of his mother and I – after she viewed him doing this the first time she just looked at him. The second time he did it, she just pretended it didn’t happen. A serial killer in the making… — My favorite part about that kid was when the couple moved out, the landlady blamed their dog for a few spots on the wood floors. The wife, when telling me about her blowout with the landlady, said “it wasn’t the dog, it’s my four year old that pees on the floor” — she said this as if this is normal and acceptable behavior of a child of potty training age.

Back to the prospective tenants. For a while there, every single couple that came thru had a child. My personal favorite was the couple who had just driven in from Chicago. The wife was carrying what looked to be a newborn. As I was showing them the house, she asked me “how loud” I was. Then, the woman had the audacity to ask me to go upstairs to my area & walk around so she could see if the noise would be loud enough to disturb the baby. WTF? Note, I was wearing foam soled flip flops at the time, and pointed this out to her. In retrospect, I should have put on my stilettos with the hard soles and stomped around. After my noise demonstration, she asked me if the neighborhood had any children. I looked at the baby she was clutching and said “you mean, children your baby’s age?” – she nodded. I said “no” — this elicited a frown from her. I never saw that couple again — perhaps it was me stressing over 3 times how “I keep late hours, like 2 or 3 in the morning” ;-)

The best example, however, that I have for the type of scenario that you’re talking about is the wedding, where the couple provides a nursery, notes the nursery in the invitation, and pays people to tend a nursery — and every single time, some rude parents insist on bringing their child(ren) to the ceremony. I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count.

Yes, children are special and all that. But I don’t have children and shouldn’t have to adjust my life to those who choose to do so.

I totally agree, Katherine. In addition to the points you make, it is inconsiderate of the people who did honor the invitation and hired a babysitter and were looking forward to an evening without kids. Any mother will tell you that the cry of a child immediately snaps you out of whatever you are doing and launches you into “mommy mode.” The stress of being “on call” all the time is overwhelming, and getting away from it, even just for a couple of hours, is crucial to maintaining some small level of sanity. If I go to the time, considerable hassle, and expense of hiring a babysitter for a scream-free evening, I would appreciate it if others would do the same.

“craps ITS pants” – That reminded me – I talked to my mom a couple of days ago, and she had very recently been to a movie during which a couple with a baby sat behind her. That baby crapped its pants mid-film, and the parents did not take it out to change the diaper, they just sat there while precious stank up the theatre the whole time. Ugh.

As you say though, maybe it’s a southern thing, but it would have been perfectly acceptable to simply say “adults only” or “please find babysitters” or even “no children please.” I’ve been to a couple parties like that in the past year.

I’m a parent, but it’s not like I’m completely blind to the fact that my kids are noisy, smelly, and annoying at times, so – again, just speaking for me – I’m not insulted when someone wants to have an adults only time.

But again, I was raised in the midwest, not the south, so customs may be different.

Chance, I’m midwestern, too. That gets me in a lot of trouble here in the South.

Beth, I’m cringing just thinking of it. Undisciplined children breaking other people’s property and peeing on the floor when they’re old enough to know better….it gives me hives and heart palpitations.

Lydia, that was my other point that I got too sidetracked to make. it wasn’t fair to the other two couples who were soooo tired and worn down from their newborns’ needs and had looked at this as a rare opportunity to recharge their batteries.

Instead of unwinding with grownups they got to be reminded of their own children’s cries and be thrust into an anxiety they could do nothing about.

It also caused them to keep talking about their baby to the obviously-hurting hostess who would have rather talked about anything else.

As you say though, maybe it’s a southern thing, but it would have been perfectly acceptable to simply say “adults only” or “please find babysitters” or even “no children please.” I’ve been to a couple parties like that in the past year.

Chance, I’m 5th generation Southern from Mississippi & I can’t speak for other parts of the country — but we, in the South, pride ourselves on manners. Wait, we USED to. I don’t know what’s going on, honestly.

I refer to the wedding scenario I spoke of – In short of noting on the invitation “don’t bring your damn kids to scream during the most important day of my life”, some people simply think this does not apply to them and their precious little angel(s).

But, Beth, why do you consider it more mannerly to make an ambiguous statement about not having much for kids to do than to make a direct but friendly request not to bring children to the party? I would think that “no children, please” is actually more polite than coded messages that may be missed or ignored.

Not having children, I understand the no kids desire. But, if the invitation did not say “no children” specifically, there’s nobody to blame but the people who sent the invite. it said there was nothing for them to do, but infants aren’t into doing a lot as far as I’ve noticed.

Besides, parents are not a couple any longer, they are a family. The party-giver invited them knowing full well they had a recent addition to the family. To expect them to dump this child on someone else to care for when the child is that young is asking a lot. We have friends who never went anywhere on vacation without their children until the kids were both teens and even then called home every other day at least.

Parents bond with their children, they’re supposed to – who they now are includes their child. Invite them if you wish, but tell them it is adults only if you expect no children. Even at that, life happens and their plans may fall through with whatever plan they had for the kids. If they show up, it’s because they like and want your company. You’re also supposed to be a gracious host, that’s a Southern thing.

Thankfully, we had a child-free wedding – no children in the wedding party and no children in the sanctuary. I instructed my friend who kept the book to tell anyone who walked in with a child that we had a hired nursery worker and they must go there (“must be this tall to enter”). My own cousin stayed with her child and wouldn’t come because her few month old child couldn’t come. I didn’t care. I’ve seen too many weddings ruined by crying or disruptive children and mine was not going to be this way.

“tell them it is adults only if you expect no children. Even at that, life happens and their plans may fall through with whatever plan they had for the kids. If they show up, it’s because they like and want your company.” – I’m sorry, maybe I’m a crank, but if they’re specifically told “no children” and their plans for childcare fall through, they need to stay home, not show up with them anyway. At the very minimum, they should call and say, “My babysitter canceled,” and give the host a chance to say either, “Oh, I’m sorry, I hope to see you next time,” or “Oh, that’s okay, come on and bring them.”

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